Devon-based Tamar manufactures various types of cartons and polythene packaging for the food industry, and wanted to add capacity in its direct food contact packaging facility.

The FL5 can be set up to run cartons, scratchcards and flexible packaging; Tamar will use it primarily to convert cartonboard for the FMCG market and to produce self-erect cartons for bakeries and other fresh food producers.

The FL5 boasts AiiR (autonomous inking, impression and print registration) features as standard, deploying precision camera technology to improve registration accuracy and automated print pressure control to reduce operator intervention, cut waste and minimise set-up times.

It has a substrate range of 12 to 600 microns and can print on stocks up to 510mm wide.  Its top speed is 200m a minute.

Paul Baker, Tamar’s technical operations manager, said the 7-colour FL5 will “give us the opportunity to venture into new areas of the packaging world so we are able to offer our existing customers the opportunities to enhance their products further”.

Tamar already has an Edale press, a four-colour Sigma which it has been using for around 15 years, and will continue to use.  But the opportunity to add more colours would provide greater flexibility, Baker said.

“With this press we can look at doing higher quality, wider widths and different styles of packaging,” he said.

Adrian High, managing director, said the investment was “well north of half a million” but the business was growing fast, with three new accounts already added since the beginning of the year. “We concentrate on base card production and we are reel to sheet rather than sheetfed so we are quite unique in what we do,” said High. 

Turnover is predicted to top £2m within the next 18 months.

Tamar used to be a label printer and so has a long history of using Edales.  The new press will be installed in Tamar’s purpose-built 1,000sqm BRC factory at the end of April and is expected to take two weeks to set up.